Chapter 5 - The Text From Nowhere
I stood on the sidewalk outside Ferraro's and read it three times.
We should talk. Tonight.
No name. No context. Local area code, nothing else familiar about it.
I looked both directions down the block. The dark sedan was still there, engine off, no one visible behind the wheel. A cab rolled past. A couple walked by laughing about something.
I typed back: Who is this?
The dots appeared right away. Then: Eleanor.
I stopped walking. The retired teacher. The lake house. The one Rachel had named at the table.
I typed: How did you get my number?
Rachel. She texted me the second she saw his car. Told me she was going in. I've been parked out here.
I looked back at the sedan. The driver's window slid down two inches. A hand appeared, then dropped out of sight.
I walked over. The woman behind the wheel was early sixties, silver hair, reading glasses pushed up onto her head. She had the kind of tired on her that has nothing to do with the time of night.
"Eleanor?" I said through the gap.
"You'd be the date." No judgment in it. "Get in for a minute. You'll freeze out there."
I hesitated. Rachel had trusted her enough to text her. That was good enough for me. I got in.
The car smelled like peppermint and secondhand paperbacks. There was a coffee in the cup holder and a manila folder on the passenger seat, which she moved to the back before I sat.
"I'm not trying to scare you," she said. "I just wanted to talk to somebody who'd seen him within the hour. To find out whether he's changed at all."
"Has he?"
She looked at the restaurant door. "No."
We sat with that.
"Rachel told me about the account," I said. "That he might have already tried something tonight."
Eleanor nodded slowly. "That's what I'm afraid of. The last time he made a comment like that to her — the last time he said he 'knew' something — he'd already done it. Three days earlier. He plans it out. He just likes to tell you afterward, when it's harder to reverse."
My stomach tightened. "She called her bank on the way in."
"Good. I didn't. That was my mistake." She picked up her coffee, didn't drink it. "By the time I understood what he'd done, he'd already pulled money out of a joint account we'd opened for a trip. Not a fortune. But enough. And I'd given him the login to book the hotel, so—" She stopped. "It doesn't matter now. It's done."
"Did you get it back?"
"Some. After three months and a lot of phone calls." She set the cup down. "I'm not out here about the money, though. Not really."
"Then what?"
She reached into the back and brought the manila folder onto her lap. Didn't open it.
"I've been putting something together," she said. "For about a year. Every woman who's contacted me. Every date Rachel knew about. Every transaction anyone was willing to write down. Dates, amounts, his exact words when people remembered them." She tapped the cover. "Seven women. Fourteen separate incidents. Three with bank records."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I've been talking to a journalist. She covers financial fraud, consumer protection, that kind of thing. She thinks there might be enough here for a story. Not a criminal case — we already know how that road ends. A story." She finally looked at me directly. "I wanted to ask if you'd be willing to add what happened tonight."
"I didn't lose anything," I said. "Rachel paid."
"I know. But you were in the room. You heard him." She opened the folder and I caught a flash of printed emails, handwritten notes, a bank statement with lines marked in yellow. "A witness who didn't lose a dime is sometimes harder to wave off than one who did."
I looked at the folder. Then at her. "Who's the journalist?"
She told me the name. I knew it. Anyone in my line of work knew it.
"She's good," I said.
"She's very good." Eleanor closed the folder. "She wants to meet next week. Rachel's coming. Two of the others said yes. I'm asking you because you're the most recent. And because you got out before it cost you anything. I think that counts for something."
I thought about Derek at the door. I know about the account, Rachel. The flat, deliberate way he'd said it. Not a threat, exactly. A demonstration.
"Yes," I said. "I'll come."
Eleanor exhaled. It was the first time she'd looked like anything other than composed. "Thank you."
My phone buzzed. Rachel: Bank confirmed. He tried to start a transfer at 7:52. They blocked it. Calling me tomorrow.
May you like
I showed Eleanor the screen. She read it and shut her eyes for one second.
"Seven fifty-two," she said. "That's before he even sat down with you."
